Scorn is one of the premiere examples of a "not for me" kind of game I can possibly think of. It's a game with the main focus of artistry over gameplay, and yet...despite not really getting into these types of games, I still managed to stick with it throughout the very end, even managed to 100% it. But why?
To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure myself, but something about this game made me genuinely curious and made me want to see where this game went. That being said I have absolutely no comment about the story, there's no dialogue whatsoever and the game never explains anything and instead requires you to either piece things together or come up with your own interpretation of what's going on. The real strength of Scorn lies in its environmental design, inspired wholesale by H.R. Giger. The dim, biomechanical structures with contraptions seemingly made of flesh and bone work wonders for the eerie oppressive atmosphere that permeates throughout the game, additionally helped by the fact that the game looks fantastic detail and resolution wise. It's by far the biggest highlight of the game, the main objective seemingly to gross you out and make you extremely uncomfortable at every turn. Other than just walking forward, there are quite a few puzzles to solve in order to progress, and aside from a couple of overly cryptic examples at both the beginning and end, I thought the puzzles were relatively solid all around. Combat is quite possibly the biggest issue many have with Scorn, and to be fair, it isn't great. The starting piston gun has awkward range and needs to recharge constantly, it's far too clunky to be a reliable weapon. The other weapons do a much better job at taking care of enemies, but ammo is extremely limited. It's a combat system that seems to be "intentionally" bad/clunky, which is personally one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to horror games, but here, honestly I didn't mind it. It's not exactly graceful by any means and it sucks when going against specific stupidly tanky enemies, but I got used to it fairly quickly. I've played far FAR worse combat systems than this in other horror games that actively drag down the overall experience (see also, Silent Hill 2), and as not very good as this was, I was able to circumvent the awkwardness somewhat, by figuring out the effective range and using the unlimited sprint I had to my benefit. It also helps that combat in general is really only a thing you deal with 4/5th of the way through the game anyway so it's very abrupt. Scorn in general does get a little same-y and repetitive but the biggest saving grace about it is that it's a very short game, my full playthrough only lasting around a little over 6 hours. If this game were like, 15 or so hours long, I would start to have major issues, but thankfully Scorn knows exactly what it wants to do and how long it wants to be. I didn't feel like my time was wasted, and while I still don't personally vibe with it, it was overall a very interesting experience that I'm glad I ended up playing at least once.
To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure myself, but something about this game made me genuinely curious and made me want to see where this game went. That being said I have absolutely no comment about the story, there's no dialogue whatsoever and the game never explains anything and instead requires you to either piece things together or come up with your own interpretation of what's going on. The real strength of Scorn lies in its environmental design, inspired wholesale by H.R. Giger. The dim, biomechanical structures with contraptions seemingly made of flesh and bone work wonders for the eerie oppressive atmosphere that permeates throughout the game, additionally helped by the fact that the game looks fantastic detail and resolution wise. It's by far the biggest highlight of the game, the main objective seemingly to gross you out and make you extremely uncomfortable at every turn. Other than just walking forward, there are quite a few puzzles to solve in order to progress, and aside from a couple of overly cryptic examples at both the beginning and end, I thought the puzzles were relatively solid all around. Combat is quite possibly the biggest issue many have with Scorn, and to be fair, it isn't great. The starting piston gun has awkward range and needs to recharge constantly, it's far too clunky to be a reliable weapon. The other weapons do a much better job at taking care of enemies, but ammo is extremely limited. It's a combat system that seems to be "intentionally" bad/clunky, which is personally one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to horror games, but here, honestly I didn't mind it. It's not exactly graceful by any means and it sucks when going against specific stupidly tanky enemies, but I got used to it fairly quickly. I've played far FAR worse combat systems than this in other horror games that actively drag down the overall experience (see also, Silent Hill 2), and as not very good as this was, I was able to circumvent the awkwardness somewhat, by figuring out the effective range and using the unlimited sprint I had to my benefit. It also helps that combat in general is really only a thing you deal with 4/5th of the way through the game anyway so it's very abrupt. Scorn in general does get a little same-y and repetitive but the biggest saving grace about it is that it's a very short game, my full playthrough only lasting around a little over 6 hours. If this game were like, 15 or so hours long, I would start to have major issues, but thankfully Scorn knows exactly what it wants to do and how long it wants to be. I didn't feel like my time was wasted, and while I still don't personally vibe with it, it was overall a very interesting experience that I'm glad I ended up playing at least once.